Sales Series

Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show Podcast 

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Jason:  Good morning, Triad.  Hope everybody is doing well. Hope everybody survived last night’s, well whatever it was that blew through here.  It was wide open.  So maybe you got your canoe out. Maybe you are floating in the front yard, but unfortunately, there is more to come.  Hey, if we did not have the weather to talk about, some of us would not have anything to say. Right?  It is too hot.  It is too cold.  It is too this. It is too whatever, but anyway, if you are out there, be safe.  I think flash flood warnings are still out, so be cautious if you live anywhere near a little stream.  Sometimes it becomes a very big one quickly. Use precaution and obviously do not let the kids out playing in the creek.

Last week, we got into a series on sales.  We are going to continue that this week. We started talking a little bit about sweat equity last week, and now we are going to dive into the good old-fashioned sweat equity, hard work, making it happen, getting out there doing well, digging in and grinding out stuff.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  It is a piece of business that is required for all business especially when you are getting them started.  Somebody has got to push the boulder to get it going, to get the momentum.

Mikell: And I really appreciate this topic, Jason, because one thing you touched on last week is basically just having confidence in yourself, knowing that what you want to do matters.  When you are talking about the part with the tractor, you probably thought that was a silly idea.  Now, that is a million-dollar company.

Jason:  That is right. Yeah, absolutely.  People a lot of times they avoid problems.  I want problems.  Problems are what give us security in what we do.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  The internet cannot fix problems.

Mikell: No.

Jason:  I can. I can fix your problem.  I can fix your problem house. You are not going to do that by clicking the mouse and going to whatever out there.  You still have to have human capital and human people to do many, many, many of the tasks.  I am not afraid of the robot generation although it will replace some jobs. Some of it is good because for safety reasons and those kinds of things we need robots doing certain things like it gets pretty dangerous out there in some of these careers and careers paths that people have.  So technology is good, but it does not replace hustle.

Mikell:  No.

Jason:  It does not replace getting out there and making it happen. One of the things that you have really got to start doing is you have got to stop doing stupid, too. Warren Buffet has a great quote. He has got two rules in business.  The first rule is never ever, ever lose money.  The second rule see rule one. That is it.  That is a great line –

Mikell:  I like that.

Jason:  -- from a guy that has a few Benjamins under his belt.

Mikell:  Just a few.

Jason:  Just a few. Just a few. You need to start looking at doing smart things with your money and time and making good moves in the right direction, right place.  So today we are going to dig into that.  The mindset.  The mindset of champions.  What do champions do in order to win? I will assure you they do not sit at home and watch TV and just entertain themselves.  Right? 

Mikell:  No.

Jason: They have a plan. They have a purpose, and they are out there working it. So grab your pen and paper and let’s crush this Saturday morning and get things rocking and rolling. We can make excuses pretty much for anything that does not line up with our quick, easy plan and basically avoid this thing called sweat equity, avoid this thing called work. It is called work because it is no fun.  Right? It would be awesome if you could, think about this. I am waking up today and I am going to go do fun at your job.  Right?  Typically, that is not the mentality that we have, but that is a mind shift, and when you can make fun at your job and what you do, my wife gets frustrated with me sometimes because she will call and she is like are you coming home.  I am like yeah, sure, absolutely.  What time is it? It is like 8:30.  Oh, whoops. Just kind of blew right through that.  Sometimes it is I just get caught up in what I am doing, and I get excited about it and time just blows through.  Sometimes I am there late because well, it is busy. We have got a lot of stuff happening.  And you cannot get it all in and done in a 40-hour week.  I have folks that tell me I work 40 hours. I am like what do you do after Wednesday?  They look at me like what?

Mikell:  I like that.

Jason: I was like well, yeah, what do you do after Wednesday? If you are only working 40 hours you are not really getting, I do not know.  Get a bigger stick. Get more leverage. Things to think about as we go through this, the mindset, the difference between having an idea and making it happen is really in the work, in the sweat equity.  And so as an investor, one of the things I look for is the proof of concept before I invest, before I put my money into anything, I want to make sure has it been done before. And you should ask the same thing.  Have you done it?  What are the results and can it be scaled?  That is what I am looking for.  I get a lot of folks call me, and they have great ideas.  They are like hey, would you partner with me on this?  I am like sure, but I find out it is theory, and it is hard to invest in theory.  There are companies that do that, but most investors do not invest in theory, and if they do, they are a very, very, very high-risk investment.  Just to give you an idea.  When you have an investor, when those three things line up, when you have the proof of concept, when you have done it, you have the results, and it can be scaled, the banks and investors will throw cash at you.

Mikell: Absolutely.

Jason:  You will never have an issue with money ever when you have those things lined up. I got a friend who needed $20 million for a project.  $20 million is not a little bit of money.

Mikell:  Not at all.

Jason:  That is a lot of zeroes. But because he had all three of these things lined up, he was able to raise that money in less than 90 days. Okay?

Mikell:  Wow.

Jason:  So that was from lots of different people, lots of different people that had faith in what he was doing, but he was also able to show them that he was able to do this, and he had done it in the past. He had done it on smaller scales.  Typically, when it works on a small scale, it most of the time will work on a big scale.  That is called working out your proof of concept.  And so, those are the things that you have to do.  He was able to show that I have done so and so with x amount of money and here are the results and here is where we will go and here is how it is going to grow.  And the formula works for any widget on the planet.  Anything.  Any kind of widget out there it works as long as those three factors are deployed in every single transaction.  So he got his $20 million because he had a proof of concept. He had a plan, and he was able to show and prove that it was not a theory of concept.

Mikell:  It seems like he showed that previous sweat equity as well.

Jason:  Yes.

Mikell:  That is what sold it.

Jason:  There is no doubt about it. Yeah, because if you do not have the sweat equity behind it, what do you have?

Mikell:  Nothing.

Jason:  Theory. You have got theory.  You got an idea.  Theory may be good for the science labs, but they are not great for business. 

Mikell:  No, not at all.

Jason:  They are not great for business.  If you prove it works small perfectly, first, keyword, first, then you will get the opportunity to show it big. But you have got to do it. So next question I get is where in the world and how do I start?

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  Really the key thing is you start with what is in front of you.  You start with the prospect next door. Knock on a neighbor’s door.  The business next door. The school, whomever you know that needs your product or service.  It makes no difference.  Action is the key to sales.  You have to go do it.  You have to go make it happen. A lot of people want to skip that step because that is the rejection step.  Right? Think about, there are so many stories out there, but everybody from McDonald’s to KFC and all these different companies and they are billion-dollar corporations, most of them got told no hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of times because maybe they were talking to the wrong audience, or they were just working out the grind.

Mikell:  My generation is afraid to fail.  I admit that. 

Jason:  They are. They are hypersensitive to failure.

Mikell: I like that.

Jason:  Hypersensitive.  Most people want to skip that step and they want to go straight to advertising. Advertising does not create really much. What it does though it enhances what you are already doing.  You start by beating the street.  All right?  You start by knocking on the door, knocking on the business.  I have spent, fortunately, where I am at in my career in my life, I have been able to spend time with people of Shark Tank and the host of the show, and got to know some of them better than others, but I have been fortunate to get around people that are big thinkers.  One of the interesting things is all of them started out kind of with this door-to-door, ground-roots, knocking on businesses or knocking on their neighbor’s door, it is how they started their careers.  They did not start at this high level that we see.  Dave Ramsey used to say on the radio all the time, he goes people think we are an overnight success.  I have been doing this for 28 years, but I am an overnight success. Because they only see what they want to see or they only, now you are only visible to them at the level that you are at.

Mikell:  That is true.

Jason:  You did not see them going through the grind.  And that is why they have books. You go back and read the books and you listen to the grind.  Damon Johns has a got a great story, one of the guys on Shark Tank. This guy closed this company five different times and threw in the towel, and just something kept going out there and going out there.  Now he is running an $8 billion company.

Mikell: That was actually really key what you just said, Jason.  I do not know if you know it or not.  But I would say my generation needs to read more books and stay off social media because social media shows where I am at now. They do not show the grind.  They do not show the sweat equity. They do not show the pain.

Jason:  That is right.

Mikell:  The book would cover all of that.

Jason:  Yes.  Absolutely it does, yes. Yes, books are phenomenal.  I find that most leaders and most people that succeed at a high level read many, many, many more books than they watch YouTube or the book of faces that are out there.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  Most of those faces are fake faces.  So think about where you are getting your information. Nobody gave these folks millions of dollars to get started.  They started one sale a at a time.  It is fun. If you watch Mark Cuban, he does not invest in much.  He is probably the shark that invests the least, but he carries a lot of wisdom in what he says.  If you watch him closely, especially his body language, you will notice when someone says that they door knock to sell their product, he lights up, man.  That is when you get his attention.

Mikell:  Wow.

Jason:  You want to get Mark Cuban’s money, you tell him you knock on doors to sell your product, and you sell it at a high level, and you have some profitability in that, and I will tell you what.  That guy, he gets excited.  He lights up. He is behind that. Why?  Because you cannot duplicate or replace that kind of hustle. A machine will not do that.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason: Right?  And that is a drive and a will.  At the end of the day, if you really think about it, he is not investing most of the time in the product. He is investing in that person that has the courage to get out there and present.  The person that is willing to go knock on doors and present their product, that is what he is investing in.  You look at some of the widgets that he does not, and they are successful. What is the story behind it?  Is there hustle in there? Is there grassroots’ sales? And those are the things that he gets excited about.  Not just him.  There are other sharks that do that as well, but anyway. So this weekend, dig down, drum up the courage to get started, and that is all that it takes.  Some of you guys are sitting on billion-dollar ideas, and unfortunately, they will go to the grave with you because you will never take the action to do it.  People ask me.  What does it take to make money? What does it take to be successful in business?  Most people immediately go to money.  It absolutely has nothing to do with money. It is 100% courage.

Mikell:  Wow.

Jason:  If you do not have the courage to get started, the money makes no difference.  If I give you $100 million, and you do nothing with it, one, as an investor, I do not get a return, and two, you just have $100 million.  Right?

Mikell: Right.

Jason:  And if it is not doing anything for you, you will eventually go through it.  There is a masterful teacher that talks about this.  He does not use money.  He uses a thing called talents, and he gives you an example.  It is a story of three different people with three different talents, and three different ways in which they used the talents.  He gave one person ten talents and the other a couple, and one guy got one.  And the guy that got one did not do anything with it.  He had the talent to go out and make it happen, and he did not.  And what did the teacher do?  He took the talent away from him and gave it to the person that actually had the most, that was actually using the talent. Think about the stories that we hear and when you read books, you learn, and there are simple, teachable moments that are in that book. It just takes one little ah ha to really get you started.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  Think about that. America is built on small business. Most people think it is built on corporate America.  It is not.  Corporate America does not drive America.  Small business, people out here, the HVAC guy, the plumber, the electrician, the real estate agent, the insurance guy.  These are the heartbeat and what drives America.  The guy that fixes the truck. These are the guys that make it happen.  We unfortunately put too much emphasis on corporate America.  If you want to know the power, and some of you guys do, or the lack of power and the lack of hope and faith that you can have in corporate America, some of you have experienced this.  You are working for a Fortune 100 company.  Everything is awesome. You have got your pension.  You have got all the PTO time you want. Four weeks of vacation.  Everything is awesome, and you walk in one day, and they say we are closing the division, and 10,000 of you, 3,000 of you, 500 of you are going home. They did not ask about what was going on in your life.  They did not ask about the struggles that are going on with your family.  They simply said the bottom line says we cannot afford you any longer, therefore, you have to leave.  That is not a place of control that you really want to be in especially when you are 57 years old and you get that message, and you are making $85,000 a year.  Try going and replacing that at 57 years old.  Very difficult. So small business. Those opportunities that you have, those ideas that you have, let’s go put them to work this weekend.  Take action.  Get the courage. Go out there and do it.  Hey, guess what? You are going to mess up.  The first 100 people may say no.  But if the 101st guy says yes, it actually could change your entire, well, it could actually change you and every person behind you.  Your entire legacy of what you want to do and leave on this earth could be changed just by one person saying yes.  But you might have to hear 100 no’s first.  All right.  We are going to take a time out, go pay some bills, and we are going to come back and we are going to dig into the how a little bit more.  So will be right back. You are listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show. We will see you here in just a minute.

And welcome back to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show. So we were digging into the why and the get started and what should I do, so now it is the how.  I hear this quite often when I talk to, especially different real estate agents around the country.  They are like well, Jason, that is easy for you. You are on the radio.  You are on TV.  You have got billboards everywhere.

Mikell:  You have the number one real estate company in the Triad.

Jason:  There you go.  Even better.

Mikell: Yeah.

Jason:  All these things that I do, yes, but remember it goes back to marketing enhances.  It does not actually get the stone rolling down the hill.  I get a lot of folks.  I am just working from my kitchen table. I am just working from my garage. I started on a cardboard box, which was my kitchen table because we did not have a kitchen table.  We had a big cardboard moving box, probably a refrigerator or something.  That is where I started.  I did not start with billboards up and down the highway, and I did not start on the radio.  I did not start with those things. So stop looking at where you are and look at where you are going.  That is the key.  You cannot look at where you are.  And then you need to set targets.  Targets are key. Targets show predictable numbers. When you do start, you need to know where you are going.  You have got to put that number on paper.  You have got to be able to create a formula or a recipe in order to get to the sale. So if you do not do that, then you have this unpredictability.  Unpredictability is not something people invest in. They do not invest their money in a service that is unpredictable, and they do not invest their money in a product that is unpredictable.  So you have to track everything. You have got to do it every day, and you have got to build a predictable system for your product, your service, or your widget.  So we use a tool called a Daily Activity Report. This is how I learned.  This is what I came up with, and this is what I teach our team members. It is just a simple sheet of paper that we created that tracks the dials, the contacts, the appointments, the tasks, and our priority touches.  Every single day.  It tracks the time that we are calling, and basically this is a blueprint to ensure that we are achieving the highest productivity in the shortest amount of time.  Doesn’t that sound like a good plan? As opposed to just doing it all the time.  Having basically building the perfect recipe to ensure that you succeed, and you do that by prioritizing and tracking that daily.  Then what happens is you create the proof of concept.  I have a plan here.  I adjust my plan daily and I get it to where it starts to prove the concept that I have. And especially for prioritizing your time.  I teach a principle called time blocking.  It is simply just being focused intense on your task for a certain period of time because if you do not do that, this thing comes along called the whirlwind, and it will blow up your day if you are not prepared.  You have got to make sure.

So the data, then that we do from our Daily Activity Sheet is actually loaded up into some cloud-based software that we have, and it creates a history.  It creates a system in which I can see numbers over a long period of time.  It takes that daily activity and it creates a nice, long tale in which I can see where a team member may start to kind of get off course.  If they veer off course a little bit, I can see it happening, and I know the result of veering off course. This basically lets me see around corners.  It lets me know when I have got a team member that is headed to the ditch, and they do not know it because their head is down and they are working hard, but they are not working in the right area or they are not doing the right things.  So now I have data to be able to see that.  I can see that deviation. 

We will play with some numbers, and I know numbers are hard on the radio. But let’s just say you had 18 conversations in order to get to an appointment.  You talk to 18 people and now you have got an appointment to get in front of them, and let’s say it is seven appointments to get to the sale.  So you have got 18 people you speak with to get an appointment.  Now you have seven appointments, and then you get a sale.  If the team member is getting the appointments but they are not getting the sales, then there is an issue with their face-to-face contact.  They are doing great on the phone, but they are blowing it up when they get in front of the people. Right?

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  So we are able to see that.  So what is it?  Is it their body language? Did they show up late? Are they off script?  Are they not asking for the business?  That is a simple one.  Maybe they have face-to-face appointments nailed, but they are making 24 contacts to get an appointment instead of 18.  And now we have a scripting issue. Maybe they are off-topic, they are off-script, or they are not using the scripts in which we laid out that we know are successful in getting people to meet with you.  Maybe they are calling at the wrong time of the day.  People are busy.  If you interrupt them at the wrong time, they are not going to talk to you.

Mikell:  No.

Jason:  So you have to have a metric every day to be able to see this. You have to have a report.  You have to have data, and the cool thing about this is you do it daily to prove your concept, and then our CRM system that we have and our cloud-based software allows us to take a look at a long period of time to say hey, maybe I got off track. Everybody has a bad day. Everybody should not have a bad week.  Right?  So maybe there is something happening.  Maybe there is something going on in that team member’s life that they have not shared. Maybe their home life is a little tough.  Maybe the spouse is nagging at them.  I told you this would not work.  I told you this was a waste of time.  When are you going to make some money?  Just go get a real job.

Mikell:  Which happens.

Jason:  Go out and get a real job and quit trying to sell that widget on the side of street or knocking on those doors.  You know that is stupid and it is not going to work.  Maybe that has just gotten into their head, and it has veered them off and it has got some doubt in there.

Mikell:  You need a strong support system.

Jason:  You need a strong support system, but you also need to be strong yourself.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  If you do not have a strong support system, do you use that as an excuse.  Read books, build up your self-confidence.

Mikell: Okay.

Jason:  All right?

Mikell:  I like that.

Jason: Do not dig into the YouTube haters and doubters and your Facebook friends that think you lost your mind and all these different things.  You have got to push through that stuff.  Life is not easy. It is just the way it is.  I cannot fix that.  I am not going to be able to fix that.  This is not paradise, and so you have got to push through those obstacles.  Next week, we are going to dig into more in our series on sales.  You can go to Jason Bramblett dot com.  If you want a copy of our Daily Activity Report, just shoot me an email.  I will be happy to share it with you.  No cost.  My gift to you. Everybody have a safe weekend, and we will be back here next week on the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show.